[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Fargo Year 5, Episode 1, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” & Episode 2, “Trials and Tribulations.” ]
Fargo Year 5 has arrived, and with it comes one heck of a Midwest twist, not just on themes presented in the 1996 film but also regarding the motivations of key characters.
While fans were teased about a kidnapping involving Juno Temple‘s Minnesota housewife Dot Lyon led by Jon Hamm‘s North Dakota sheriff Roy Tillman, the true nature of their relationship hadn’t been revealed until now. Fans who tuned in learned that Dot is actually Nadine, and she is Roy’s runaway bride who has assumed a new identity and life in the nine or ten years since she fled.
Living under the name Dorothy Lyon, she’s married to meek car dealer Wayne (David Rysdahl), who is loosely based on William H. Macy‘s Jerry Lundegaard from the Coen brothers film. Unlike Jerry, though, Wayne has no insider knowledge surrounding the kidnapping orchestrated to get Dot back to North Dakota from her comfortable life in Minnesota. In fact, he’s meant to represent the opposite of what Roy embodies, which is toxic patriarchal ideals.
(Credit: Michelle Faye/FX)
Regarding Wayne’s true nature, creator Noah Hawley promises there was no intention to misdirect with his similarities for Macy’s film role. “I didn’t do anything to make you think that he was anything other than just a simple and genuine guy. I think all the setup for her fears, like ‘Are my fingerprints going into a database?’ [and being uneasy] going to sleep… We have a sense that something is coming for her, but we are in dialogue with the movie.”
Instead, Hawley says, “This idea that a husband has his wife kidnapped is the premise of both the movie and the [installment]. But it’s like if you give two different writers the same setup, they’re going to write two different stories. And with this one, I really wanted to say, ‘Okay, well, in the movie, the husband was the hero/villain, and in the show, it’s the wife that’s the hero.”
“It’s her story; she’s the one being kidnapped. And, of course, it doesn’t go the way that it went in the movie,” Hawley continues. No, instead, Dot gets away from her kidnappers, which include an inept lackey and the spooky drifter Ole Munch (Sam Spruell), who wasn’t thrilled about the false advertising he was fed by Roy’s son Gator (Joe Keery) in regards to Dot’s “tiger” status.
(Credit: Michelle Faye/FX)
When a cop car pulls them over in the middle of North Dakota, Dot makes a run for it as Munch shoots at the police. While one falls, the other, Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris), gets away and follows Dot to a nearby gas station, where they go into hiding. With the approaching threat of Ole on their tails, Witt ends up injured, and it’s up to Dot to take the lead, saving herself and Witt.
Once the threats are neutralized, or so Dot thinks, she makes a run for it, pretending she was never kidnapped at all, setting off a string of curious events. Meanwhile, the second episode, which also kicked off Year 5’s premiere, saw the introduction of Roy, a Marlboro Man-type who runs his small town as if he’s the law itself.
“I wanted to return to a contemporary story,” Hawley shares, “2019 is as late as I can get without running into the pandemic, which I didn’t really want as part of the story. But it puts us firmly within the Trump presidency and the changes that have come to America since 2016.” It’s no secret what kind of man Roy is supposed to embody.
A billboard bearing his face reads, “A hard man for hard times,” he recites bible verses, sees women as property, and operates under his own set of rules for both himself and his friends, putting him in the FBI’s crosshairs. “The irony of a franchise that’s based around the idea of ‘Minnesota nice,’ which is a facet of a polite society in which people don’t complain and communicate their true feelings, they just kind of hold it all in, and you get this passive aggression when the reality is, I don’t see a lot of passive aggression around anymore. It’s just aggressive aggression.”
Hawley says he wanted to explore the idea of “What does that mean for Fargo? What does that mean for Minnesota nice? And so we opened with this definition of Minnesota nice, and then this visual of this school board meeting turned melee.” As for Dot and daughter Scotty (Sienna King) at the school meeting, Hawley points out, “They’re the only people who haven’t lost their minds. It tells you a lot about her, but then she’s resourceful enough to get out of that room when people start to come at her.”
As for the looming threats ahead, Hawley acknowledges the note left behind by Ole Munch for Roy on the slain body of Gator’s partner. “He’s the wildcard in a lot of ways. In order to be Fargo, you have to have enough moving pieces on a collision course. And if it was just Roy is coming for Dot, there’s only so much story that you can get out of that,” Hawley points out. “But Roy hires these two guys to go get Dot, and one of them turns out to be this unexpected element that then Roy has to worry about is coming for him. Now, suddenly, the story is unpredictable.”
What will happen next? Stay tuned as Fargo Year 5 unfolds, and keep an eye out for more coverage on the FX anthology in the weeks ahead.
Fargo, Year 5, Tuesdays, 10/9c, FX